Unearthing an old notebook

I found an old notebook of observations I'd jotted down on some of my trips.

At the Chelsea Hostel in NYC, a sign taped above the toilet: "Please do not discharge anything into the toilet except toilet paper." Hmmm, I'm still crossing my legs.

A sign on a nice building: "Beech Block: Artist in Residence at this Address." Is it a zoo? Can we feed it?

In Lubec Maine: "I like the Italian people, I just got back from NYC. The Gambino wedding. My uncle was their tax attorney." Back away slowly...

"The only bookstore in Washington County!" How sad to bill yourself as such.

An elderly man was zipping along the main street of a small, coastal Maine town on a riding lawnmower. It had a crate rigged on the hood containing spare oil and a book, his walking cane, and an American flag. Pasted along the side was a bumper sticker touting WMYX 91.9, and hung crookedly on the taillight was a wooden sign stating "Beware of Dog." Worked for him.

From a court decision involving Pete Seeger: "We are not inclined to disagree with his opinion even thought he is unworthy of our respect."

Pah. Commercials.

What a day. I'm pooped. I mean, the Ionic Breeze blew all the hair off my Chia Pet and I had to use my Ginzu Knife to chop it up, and then applied directly to my forehead.

Commercials. Can't stand 'em. I don't have a TiVo but I do have a mute and an off button. So there.

Autobiography in a few words or less

So my blogging friends are writing more about themselves. One of them asked (begged) for more information from all her friends so she could use the info as a benchmark for normal and go from there. Ha! A futile effort! LOL!

About me: I am a writer living in a two-room studio apartment. I work here all day except for Wednesdays, when I volunteer at an after school Bible program and Wed nights when I teach Bible to kids. Thursdays I have a meeting at church. On Sundays I open the Sunday School with a short devotional. The rest of the time during the days is my own.

I spend it studying, writing, playing with my cats, driving around the county taking photos or visiting some of my elderly friends. Sometimes I make collages that aren't very good. Hey, you know, it's easier telling about what I do than about who I am. I'm not sure if I like this.

I am very organized. I make lists of what to do during the day and I feel an enormous satisfaction as I cross each one off. If I do an extra thing I add it to the list just so I can cross it off. I don't buy any groceries that aren't on my list. I rarely spend money on spontaneous splurges and if I do buy something it's sure as heck gonna be practical. For ten years in a row I asked for socks for Christmas. And meant it.

I love deeply but infrequently. Put another way, I love infrequently but deeply. I admire and cherish children, who are usually better people than people. I am easily moved but private about it. A beautifully written Psalm, a sunset, or soaring bird equally might bring tears to my eyes. I am a bible thumping Fundy who believes the Rapture is coming any minute. And that will be a huge relief, if you ask me, because lying, hypocrisy and injustice are barely tolerable for my tender heart to bear. God is very real and Jesus is the only way to heaven.

I am afraid of Sea Monkeys. They freak me out. And the box is too garish. I do not have children of my own and never regretted that for a moment. Being child-free has allowed me to travel the world, engage in my careers of choice, and move to Georgia when I got tired of Maine winters. I like blogging.

As a writer it's a good outlet. It is harder to write short than long, you know. Tighter writing is harder to do, and I have a dear friend who is a champion at writing incredible short pieces. I wish she wrote more. I had another friend who could imitate the Geico gecko to the T but make him sound very dirty. He made me laugh a lot.

I rescued two kittens and they are the light of my life. They wake me up in the morning and all day long they are so cute and loving. They're great. I've worn glasses since 7th grade and I'm not interested in wearing contacts. I am not a fashion freak but usually look nice. My hair, all grown out of the fake color, is now silver and I am getting quite a few compliments on it. I'm always on time, never lose my keys, everything is always put back in its spot and once I place the furniture in my home that is the way it stays until I die. I'm not so much a fan of change.

Left, a not-very-good-collage. Title: Navigating Spiritual Waters

NYT news flash: hopin' and wishin' away the recession

Bush Predicts No Recession
January 28, 2008
WASHINGTON — President Bush said Monday that he was confident the economy would not slide into a recession, and that the American people are strong enough to promote freedom and peace abroad while their hard work fuels prosperity at home.

WHERE? In Bushlandia? Sorry pal, we are already in a recession. Waving the American flag, no matter how vigorously, will not prevent the recession we are already IN from deepening, perhaps to a depression, by year's end. Oy, this guy's nuts.

A tiny brief on short criminals

Forget Rodents of Unusual Size, now we have Criminals of Limited Stature. Apparently, a rogue band of dwarfs have been zipping themselves into suitcases, allowing themselves to be loaded onto airplanes, and once airborne, cherry pick through passenger luggage, stealing items the travelers were too brainless to either leave at home or carry on their person. They target Swedes. I do not know why Swedes, rather than, say, Norwegians, make for a tastier target.

Detecting a change of airplane trajectory, the dwarfs zip themselves back into their luggage upon descent, and emerge on the luggage carousel to be retrieved by their partners, Thieves of Unlimited Physique.

I am not making this up. Well, only the Thieves of Unlimited Physique part.

The news report went on to name famous criminal dwarfs in film. (!) The travesty here is that the Time Bandits were omitted from this august list.

It once was lost. Now it's found

I recently posted about my day trip to a nearby town and antiquing for thrifty art finds. I wrote that I had found a neat photo album containing postcards and ephemera from the 1940s and '50s. Last night I dragged it out to start cutting up some of the things inside to use in a collage I was creating, and noticed that on one of the envelopes from a veteran's convalescent hospital was a clear address. The address was consistent, always from the same person to the same person on all the envelopes the owner had pasted inside.

Before I cut it up, I decided to find its former owner. It was a long shot, I know, depending on how old the letters' recipient was in 1944, they could long be gone. Or not.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found the woman, still living in the same town in NC! And a relative was listed living with her, same age, so I surmise it is either her twin brother or a husband of coincidental age, which is 89.

I am sending the photo album to her today, overnight express. I'll let you know how it goes!

Left, the cute artwork the convalescing soldier drew on one of his envelopes. He's really good.

OK. Scientists aren't only baffled. They're puzzled, confound it!

Weird things been happenin'. I see a bad moon rising. Scientists are baffled by weird occurrances (sewer blobs notwithstanding). Jellyfish a'swarming, tigers attacking, algae blooming, sheep circling, camels dying...Bwah ha ha

Here's some more weirdness--

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs?

"Nacreous clouds are supposed to be rare, but lately they've rolled across the Arctic circle with puzzling regularity. "It's almost hard to believe," says Swedish photographer P-M Hedén..."

100 Sheep Baffle Farmer by Forming Circle in English Field

About 100 woolly sheep formed a perfect ring while grazing in a field in England on Friday, baffling the farmer and other witnesses, the Daily Mail reports. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Russell Bird, who photographed the bizarre occurrence.

[A new take on crop circles. Where's Babe when you need him?]

Dozens of Indian Crocodiles Mysteriously Die

76 of the rare reptiles have died since mid-December in the river Chambal. Autopsies suggest the cause of death to be liver cirrhosis and stomach ulcers.

[Cirrhosis? Ulcers? Maybe the croc's mother-in-law visited and stayed too long?!?]

Imagine what it does to your stomach

Holy calzone, Batman! My old stomping grounds, LOL:

"Lewiston Maine: A 50- to 60-foot doughy mass is clogging a sewer line under the city's main drag, and crews have been unable to budge it. "We're not sure exactly what it is," Public Services Director David Jones said Wednesday. "We're just trying to get rid of it. We want it to stop clogging up our pipe."

Jones said crews opened a manhole at the Bates Street intersection and saw the clog - an oozing, white blob that looks like uncooked dough."We've tried punching through it, but each time we do, it just oozes back over the hole," he said. "It really looks like dough."

Left, the Ghostbusters StayPuft boy. Coincidence? I think not!

Fox News picked up on the Lewiston Sun Journal's report in this hilariously titled article

Weird Blob Causing Big Mess in Maine

City officials in Lewiston, Maine, are confronting a problem straight out of a 1950s horror flick as a mysterious blob has taken over a major sewer line through the town, according to a report on WMTW.com. According to city officials, the doughy, 90-foot mass is comprised of grease, flour and rags, and has been blocking a stretch of 12-inch sewer pipe on Main Street since January 13, WMTW reports.

I've fallen and I can't get up

"Suicide bomber falls down stairs ..."

"A Would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say."

Well, that'll ruin your day. Doh!

Evoking strong emotions

I recently posted some thoughts about Indoctrination and brainwashing relative to how people perceive Christians. I wrote: "Since becoming a Christian I notice a lot of pejorative language about what we believe and how we act. Here is one example: kids in a Christian home or whom attend a Christian church are being "brainwashed.'"

I mused for a short while about the pejorative language people use when describing Christians. You don't get the same reaction when people talk about other religions, that is for sure. There's just something about the name of Jesus that makes people instantly angry.

I did receive a comment responding to the short opinion piece, but I deleted it. The comment was angry, angry. You'd think I'd just ordered a jihad against the person's children. When I read down to the part where I was accused of genocide, I just pressed delete.

But since then, I have been musing not only on the language people use when describing Christians, but the anger in which this language is couched. Witness Howie Carr's editorial in the Boston Herald a week ago. Let's see how many denigrating stereotypes we can find in his very angry piece:

Howie Carr: "The Huckster was doing all right, I suppose, once one got off the main roads and into the red-dirt redneck districts [ONE] where, as H.L. Mencken once put it, the howls of holiness are heard in the woods. But overall, the “Christian leader” [TWO! scare quotes] seemed to know that the wheels were coming off his rusty pickup truck. [THREE] On the Friday TV liveshots he looked spooked, like one of his favorite snakes had just bitten him [FOUR]...It’s one thing to speak in tongues, [FIVE] it’s another to speak with a forked tongue [SIX]. But his constituency doesn’t care. They just want to hold up John 3:16 signs in the end zone at football games during the point-after kick. For some of them, “Deliverance” isn’t a movie, it’s a way of life. [SEVEN] They cheer at the end of “Easy Rider.” [EIGHT] Teeth are considered an optional fashion accessory. "[NINE]

Boy, Howie sure is happy that Pastor/Governor Mike Huckabee came in third. Nine stereotypes in less than 150 words. I wonder how happy he is about the guy who came in fourth? Or fifth. He must save his real invective for those guys. It couldn't be just because Governor Huckabee is a Christian, is it? Naw. Howie must have good reason to call the Governor a brainless liar. He just forgot to include the evidence in his piece.

Having hailed from the Boston region myself, and having moved into the very areas where Howie assumes snakes and toothless idiots stumble around holding John 3:16 signs, I can assure Mr. Carr that the folks around here are nice, industrious, pleasant folk who have all their limbs and teeth, do not own a Ronco Total Squirrel Fry-o-Lator and do indeed believe "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Even for Mr. Carr. Especially for Mr. Carr.